The 20's were...
by Kermie'd
Summary: Set in the future, an unnamed friend mourns the effect the world had on Daria. It's kind of political, but don't let that put you off.


  
The 20's were...  
  
A little ranting fic' set in the future, written by Kermie'd.  
Kermie84_84@yahoo.com  
Standard disclaimer applies, though as far as I can tell, fanfic authors can't really be touched legally anyway.  
If anyone can tell me who they think this is written from the P.O.V of, they win... no prize... Heh, not that impressive, but I'd love to hear what people think.  
Alright, this is the first fic I've posted at this site (see if you can find the others I've posted at various places over the last couple of years. Bet you can't. Bet you don't bother trying.) but don't be nice to me on account of it. Feel free to post fluffy little I loved it! : ) or nasty That was shit! reviews. Please, please. I love the weirdness of the instant review process that happens here.  


  
  
1  
I stood up. She obviously wanted me to go away. I turned and walked away, catching the last of her weak as I sat back at his desk.  
A few minutes later she returned.  
Thanks for that. I don't know how I fell asleep there.  
  
Do I know you?  
That's who you are. It's been bothering me since I woke you up. I sort of... knew you in high school.  
She squinted at him and shook her head. Too early. She walked off.   
I muttered, as I tried to get back to my book. As always.  
Four hours later she was back. A change of clothes and hairstyle made her look slightly less disheveled, but she still had that look about her that made me wary of my behavior. She raised a hand in recognition as she made her way back into the shelves. Mentally kicking myself for not telling her my name, I sat back and stared out the window a minute before leaving the book on the table and heading off. I didn't see her for another year.  
2  
On the verge of dropping out, I stumbled into the student lounge of my building one Thursday, to find her standing on one of the tables in the middle of the room, just looking around. Puzzled, I leaned against the wall to see what would unfold. It was rare to see this kind of behavior from the older undergraduates, let alone a post-grad. I didn't know much about her at the time, just that she was a history and politics geek, and had been granted a research scholarship by some very wealthy admirer of her work.  
I looked around. People were slowly stopping their conversations and turning to stare at her. When the room was quieter, she spoke, very quietly. The crowd drew in around her.   
As you probably know, I'm a nut case. People laughed uncomfortably. Apparently they had heard rumors.  
So she has a reputation, I thought. I should really start talking to my fellow students so I wouldn't be so hopelessly ignorant of what's going on.  
...but sometimes nut cases have important things to say. The united states government this morning announced that it would go to war against China. While you ate your breakfast, we dropped bombs, and as you sat in class, people in China realized that the American war machine was is something not to be trifled with.  
The footballers up the back cheered.  
We rock!  
  
Daria sighed, and glared at the group of ignorants. Can anyone tell me why we're at war with China?  
Hey, we're finished class for the day.  
Ugh, not again.  
The footballers, disgusted with the fact that their brains had been called on outside their normal hours, walked out. Daria ignored them.  
The government claims that we are at war with China because American aid workers were killed while in police custody in the north of China... However! She paused and seemed to stare at me, though later many would claim the look had clearly been for them. Who knew. Maybe she was staring down something the rest of us couldn't yet see. Even the families of the ONE aid worker to go missing claim that caution should be exercised, as the man had a heart condition, and left with limited medication, to be working in remote areas. In fact, his doctors advice was that he should not leave at all. It is very likely that the man died in a primitive medical center, or even at someone's home, after suffering a heart attack. Chinese authorities deny knowledge of the mans arrest, AND they have recently acquired 51% of shares in Kazakastan's world famous, and recently privatized oil mining company...  
That was the first time she spoke in front of a crowd of her own choosing. She believed so sincerely in her cause that anyone who listened could not help but be electrified by her. No one would ever guess at her quiet demeanor, unless they met her outside the political arena first, and as she became more embroiled in the controversy, that became harder and harder to do.  
The next week, we sent troops to China. 14% returned. The minister of defense recommended carpet bombing. It was safer for our boys that way.   
A month later I changed my major from engineering to international relations. My course convener was not amused. He'd heard about how I followed her around, listening to her speak.   
Son, you'll never get anywhere if you let an infatuation with that woman dictate your every decision.  
He didn't get it. It was more than that. She understood what was really important, and had the guts to fight for it. She recognized that the decline of American power would be destructive, and its restraint could only be imposed from within. How destructive, and to whom, would be a question only time could answer, and the answer would depend on the success of our movement.   
We were only the second superpower to decline since humankind had possessed the means to destroy ourselves, and I prayed every night that we would not be the last. Without another superpower to check and balance our decline, things could get out of control very fast.   
She understood the value of peace, for all situations, for all people. She knew peace was more than a catch cry for a generation already past its prime. To her it was an ideal that needed to be communicated and fought for with education, not guns.   
Her ideals I suppose were similar to those of her parents in their younger years, but she had been so cynical as a teenager that, in her career, she always held onto that realism that allowed her to wear the suit without taking on its values, because she had had to carve values out of a realists world, not impose realism onto her ideals.  
After a year of me following her around, listening to her speak, she was appointed to the position of associate professor of international history at the university. I guess they thought by giving her responsibility they could tame her. Well, she always said once they crack and give you even a little bit of power, you have only yourself to blame if you don't get exactly what you want.  
So, of course, she became my lecturer for one of my classes. I never planned to fall in love with a lecturer. By this stage, she would talk to me at the lectures she gave (quite apart from the university. These were for members of the public) and we were becoming friends. That is to say, she was becoming friends with me. I was already way past that. Later she admitted that she had suspected more affection on my part, but hadn't really had the time to think about it. Naturally, I felt quite special.   
3  
I'll never forget the day they dropped nuclear bombs on China. The war had been going on for over a year, and the government figured they could no longer afford to invest men into the conflict.  
Beijing.  
Shanghai.  
She cried in class that day.  
I can't imagine that any person in that room has forgotten the moment we realized what had happened. The nation didn't believe in duck and cover' any more, and in that room, all we could do was watch, as Daria collapsed down the wall, head in hands. No more did we believe that hiding would save us, so while the others, who had been dismissed to spend time with loved ones, hurried home, we walked the emptying streets. We, who fought for the whole world, had no one to go home to.   
4  
I don't know exactly how it happened, but the Chinese government had decided it was too expensive to keep up nuclear weapons stocks, since no one had used them in an attack on another country since 1945. They had no means of retaliation, and while the people of Beijing, Shanghai, and the surrounding areas died from radiation related illness, they struggled to regain control of a population who, upon realizing that they were at the mercy of a belligerent foreign power, had rioted. Many hundreds of thousands of lives were lost, quite apart from the bombs we dropped, and it wasn't until the army started shooting rioters that conditions became more orderly'.  
The US government never dropped another nuclear bomb on China, or any other bomb, for that matter. They didn't need to. The country completely collapsed in a matter of months according to official figures. I believe the actual figure was closer to two weeks. Anyone rich enough to buy their way out did so, and rebel groups formed. Many millions more perished in a bitter civil war.   
Petrol prices in the US dropped.   
5  
She came to me one day, as all of this was happening, and told me she was sick of feeling so helpless. I don't know if she failed to see the difference she was making in American politics, as the scale swung back to the left for the first time in many, many terms, or if the realization that it was too late for China, whatever she did, had tipped her over the edge into depression. Whatever it was, she needed me that night, for the first time, and although it shouldn't have, it felt damn good. She clung to me and cried for the fate of twenty million Chinese, and the soul of American society. Her heart seemed to die a little with every sob, and there was nothing I could do.  
In the following months she lost her job, her apartment, her sense of time, and a lot of weight. She never seemed to move from my bed, except when I offered to find her help, she would somehow find the energy to threaten to leave. She would have too, I have no doubt of that. Even at her weakest, there was something strong and uncompromising about her that I feared a little.   
I talked to anyone I could think of, and who would guarantee confidentiality, about what to do to help her. They all said the same thing, and it just wasn't a move I could accomplish.   
One day, I walked in after work, out of money, out of patience, and out of energy, to find her standing in the kitchen, dressed in a new suit, looking perfect despite the amount of weight she had lost, and sipping the last of my orange juice. I think I scared her a little when I fell down and cried at her feet. Looking mortified, and apologizing profusely, she pulled me into a standing position, kissing my face, and explaining that she had been working on this project for weeks, afraid that if she told anyone and failed this time, she'd never get out of bed again. She was back in the game, looking for updates on the situation in China, and launching into ideas for her return to the political arena, then and there.   
An hour of argument proved that victory was mine for the first time. We had a quiet night in that night. Well, I guess actually... we weren't all that quiet. Rooowlll.   


6  


The weeks that followed were a whirlwind. It seemed as if the time she had spent in bed had been returned to her in the form of increased motivation. Having lost almost a year to depression, she threw herself into her work with more force than ever before, intent on using every second to do what she now realized no one else could.  
The relapse was inevitable I suppose, in hindsight, but at the time of her recovery, I was just holding my breath and seeing what would happen. Could I have stopped her from throwing herself at it too hard? I don't think so. Not as who I was at that stage.  
She recovered again, thank god, but she was different. After her first recovery, she had seemed to be the same as ever, but this time, she showed more of the emotional scars I knew she had sustained. I suppose in a way I was relieved. It had been somewhat creepy watching her trying to convince everyone she was fine all of a sudden, when you could see in her eyes that something was being held back.   
The something was three more months of little activity, as she eased herself back from the brink again, this time a little more realistically.   


7  


At the beginning of 2021, soon after she had resumed public speaking, she was contacted by an old friend, and disappeared for three more months. Jane had ended her seven year marriage, and had nowhere else to turn. With two young girls, and little money, she had thought of Daria, though they hadn't spoken in over thirteen years, as far as I knew. There was something about that friendship that always threw me a little, like someone out there had decided that no matter what life threw at them, those two would never be alone. It's a comforting thought, that some people aren't left to the wolves entirely, but sometimes I wish Jane had stayed out of the picture.   
Her contacts with the art world, while not prestigious, opened the door to a whole new set of people for Daria. These people were more radical about their political activism than she was. They simply didn't think realistically about the effects of blindly applying black and white reasoning to the real world. I think something in her had wanted to shut off her brain for a while at that point, and Jane's radical and thoughtless friends were the answer to her prayers. Always the cynic, she was driven towards the abyss by those who wore the right intellectual mind set, but completely overlooked the moral implications of their actions. They were fans of her words, as she was a fan of their assuredness. Maybe on some level their actions could be defended, but for Daria, any action was meticulously thought out, and when she handed over control to others, whose intelligence she respected, it was inevitable that she would assume they had the same integrity as herself.   
They didn't.  
The sabotage of the 2023 went horribly wrong, or right, depending on your viewpoint. The Burnett administration rejoiced at the fall of one of the strongest left wing radical movements based in our fair nation, and Daria mourned Jane's death. While they had been separated for so long that Jane no longer held the position of best friend' (Who would presume to say that Daria had best friends in the real sense of the expression by this stage?) the footprints she had left on Daria's soul had been so well defined that she fell apart as if they had never grown apart. Beliefs long held collapsed, as she realized all the mistakes she had made since she had recovered'. One look at Jane's daughters before she told them made her abandon me in the apartment, while they stood, with questioning looks on their faces in the living room at 3am.   


7  


The early years of the twenties were, for me, as well as many of our generation, a time of great turmoil. We were lost in a time when everyone was more righteous than everyone else, and your viewpoint was valid, as long as you had a good slogan. You might think that Daria walked alone, but no, she just blazed the most noticeable path. Her integrity made her the easiest one to follow. She was the only one who had true righteousness, but when people found that they had trusted the woman credited with the deaths of so many peaceful protesters, they found another path to walk on. How can we expect one person to carry the weight of the moral outrage of an entire generation on her shoulders? Why was the burden not shared equally? Why didn't even one of us help her blaze that true path, instead of just helping her keep it clear? Why didn't one of us look ahead, instead of at her heals?   
Why didn't you?   
Why didn't I?  
What else were we doing in 2023 that was so damn important?  


8  


So I put this to you all. I know you have been waiting for me to tell the story. I know that may be the only reason I have ever sold a copy of this magazine. Finally, the story has been told. It might be the abridged version, but I think any information will do for a public so starved of the truth about our political angel. Sure, you've all forgiven her now, but where is she? The right rules unquestioned again, and whether she be dead or alive, or somewhere in between, she will never speak out again. Our generation killed our one true hero with our apathy.  


  
  
Alright, now, if I understand correctly, you are now supposed to be good little fanfic readers and actually review. Please.  
  
Crazed author mutters off into the distance... I don't know why anyone would bother... hell knows, I rarely do when I read what's here... Damnit, now I have bad reviewing Karma!


End file.
